About
An architecture studio
based in Milan
Studio
Founded in 2000 by Elena Valli, Aurelia Atelier has grown from a two-person practice into an interdisciplinary studio of thirty-two architects, designers, and thinkers. We work across scales — from furniture to buildings — but always with the same conviction: that architecture is measured not by what it adds, but by what it reveals.
Our work has been recognized with the Archdaily Building of the Year Award, the RIBA International Prize, and featured in Domus, Wallpaper*, and The Architectural Review.
Approach
Every project begins with an extended period of observation. We visit the site repeatedly, in different weather and light. We listen to what the place tells us — the slope of the land, the direction of the prevailing wind, the quality of the soil, the history embedded in the ground.
From this understanding, the design emerges not as an imposition but as a response. The building becomes an extension of the landscape — shaped by the same forces that shaped the place.
Principles
What guides our work
01
Material
We work with materials that age with dignity. Stone, wood, glass, and plaster — each chosen for its physical properties and its capacity to carry meaning over time.
02
Light
Light defines space more powerfully than any wall. We study how the sun moves across each site, shaping openings and volumes around the quality of light at every hour.
03
Process
Design is a process of refinement through iteration. We build, test, critique, and rebuild — each cycle bringing us closer to an architecture that feels inevitable.
04
Place
Every site has a memory. We begin each project by understanding the land — its history, its ecology, its orientation to the sun and wind. The building emerges from this understanding.
Influences
Our sensibility has been shaped by the Italian modernist tradition — Scarpa, Gardella, Albini — and by the vernacular architecture of the Mediterranean: the whitewashed villages of Puglia, the stone farmhouses of Tuscany, the palazzos of Venice.
We are equally influenced by what lies outside architecture: the structure of a sonata, the light in a Caravaggio painting, the patience of a gardener. The best buildings are not designed in isolation — they are conversations with everything that came before.
Methodology
We do not begin with sketches. We begin with observation. Site visits across seasons. Material samples arranged and rearranged. Physical models at 1:50 and 1:20. Conversations that circle the problem before approaching it directly.
Only then do we draw. The drawings are not declarations — they are hypotheses. Each one is tested, criticized, revised. The design emerges through a process of elimination: everything that is not essential is removed, one layer at a time.